Dunphy Art Studio located in Canal Gallery with owner artist Debra Dunphy (center) working on a painting with student Donna Bevil of Westfield. Student Joanne Oleary of Easthampton works in the background. The Republican | John Suchocki

HOLYOKE – Esthela B. Bergeron likes the concentration required when she sculpts clay into her interpretation of a human model posing in a studio, an art she has been practicing since 1988.

“It’s fun. It makes you focus, and what I like is the end result, the creation,” says Bergeron.

She is among the 30 artists at the Canal Gallery on Dwight Street who are painting, sculpting and generally, as building owner David Scher says, “being brilliant, eccentric and out of their minds.”

Estimates put the number of artists who work, live and in many cases do both in the downtown area of Dwight, Race, Main and Cabot streets at between 50 and 100.

The now thriving arts scene in the Paper City, many believe, is close to achieving a larger public awareness.

“I think it’s thriving, it’s growing,” Bergeron said.

“I’ve seen it grow from the very beginning to what we dreamed of,” said painter Donald Wilhelm, who has space at Canal Gallery. “It’s a magical place for painters. They see it once and they want to keep doing it.”

“It’s very real, it’s a zone. It includes my building and Race Street, Gateway City Arts. I consider my building the ‘Left Bank,’” said Scher, referring to the old Paris of Picasso, Hemingway and Sartre.

“It’s more of a real city to me. The buildings are beautiful. The way the city was set up with the canals, the cityscapes. There’s a lot to paint here.” said painter-sculptor Gregory Stone, in his office at the Canal Gallery.

City officials thought so much of Holyoke’s arts scene and its potential to help the economy that a municipal arts and culture position was established.

The job of creative economy coordinator was proposed by Mayor Alex B. Morse and approved with modifications by the City Council in June.

Jeffrey C. Bianchine, a photographer who lives in the heart of the arts area on Main Street, began as the first creative economy coordinator Sept. 24.

To Morse, the coordinator’s role will be to connect the various arts and cultural activities happening here to highlight Holyoke’s creative endeavors, forge links with businesses and boost economic development.

“We’ve set out to redevelop Holyoke’s ‘Center City’ using multiple approaches and tools; one of those has been promoting arts and innovation as an economic engine,” said Marcos A. Marrero, director of the city Office of Planning and Economic Development.

No one should confuse such talk with a notion that artists here are getting rich.

Stone, 65, of Northampton, said Holyoke appreciates the arts and recognizes that the arts can excite a city. But, he added, artists have to be able to “stay afloat, and it's not like the scene is yet akin to a SoHo-like neighborhood where numerous artists can make a living from their art.

“It’s a tricky question,” Stone said.

Scher suggested some form of help for artists, like low-interest loans (“cheap money”) and some sort of access to health benefits. He opened the Canal Gallery, 380 Dwight St., 40 years ago, he said.

“It just took a long time for me to be established,” Scher said.

Helping an arts scene grow was the topic for a trip Marrero and Bianchine took to Providence, R.I. in mid-December. They spent time with AS220, a nonprofit community arts center founded in 1985 that works with more than 1,000 artists a year, according to its website.

AS220 makes gallery and performance space and other help available to artists, along with classes and public-access spaces.

“It will be interesting to apply those lessons in Holyoke,” Bianchine said.

Bianchine has been in touch with artists here since he began. Much of the job of wiring the arts scene into the city economy entails increasing awareness. He talks to filmakers about getting movies made here. He plans to hang art-filled banners from utility poles in the spring. He is working on a $353,000 fund-raiser to restore City Hall’s stained glass windows.

So, while the red-brick buildings lining the canals and the old stone angles offered by structures like City Hall (built in 1876) entice an artist’s eye, no one’s going to film a major movie here without hotels in which to stay and restaurants where they can eat, preferably located downtown, Bianchine and other officials say.

A lot of work remains to spread the word that Holyoke is a go-to place for the arts, officials contend, and, for artists, that means they keep creating things people want to experience.

Those like Wilhelm and Debra A. Dunphy teach classes in painting to help supplement their incomes, Wilhelm, on a recent day, was painting with his son Jonathan Wilhelm, 23, at Canal Gallery.

Dunphy does commissioned oil paintings, portraits. She has succeeded in making a living for nine years here painting and teaching classes at the Canal Gallery, she said.

“Since I can remember, I wanted to work with portraits. I wanted to do portraits since I was 4. My mother did them, it’s in my family, my grandmother,” said Dunphy.

Working with Apremont Productions in Springfield, Dunphy has issued an instructional DVD about portrait painting.

“Yes, I raised two kids on my art,” she said.

Vitek Kruta is an artist, muralist, art restorer, set designer and teacher. He founded Gateway City Arts at 92-114 Race St. in May with partner Lori Divine, who paints, takes photos, sculpts and welds. The facility provides work space for artists, plays host to events and offers classes in water-color painting, Argentine Tango, cake decorating and abstract art.

“Think of it as gym for art. People can actually come in and pay a membership and work on their art,” Kruta said.

A sign that Holyoke is on the map of those interested in art is that most of the people who come to Gateway City Arts come from outside the city, he said.

“This is a very interesting phenomenon. Everybody who comes here is asking, ‘Where can I go to eat?’ So this is how the economy starts, you build it, little by little,” Kruta said.

May 8: City Council Ordinance Committee begins debating the proposal. Morse brings Helena Fruscio, state creative economy industry director, who praises proposal and says there’s a buzz about Holyoke: “People are talking about you guys across the state. The potential is just unbelievable.”

June 19: City Council votes 11-4 to establish position. President Kevin A. Jourdain and other councilors require residency requirement and review after two years to ensure the job is generating economic development to fund itself.

June 26: Council sets yearly salary of $43,000 for position, now known as creative economy coordinator.

July 24: First of statewide series called CreativeNEXT conference held here on how creativity can help economy.